One of those results from the tension within me: A global migrant who greatly values the continuity of lives in old cultures. I cherish the old stories from the old country, whether the stories are personal from Pattamadai and Sengottai, or from history that goes back five thousand years and more. The migration and travels are about places and peoples that are new, while I have been shedding away from my personal life the traditions of the old.
I feel rooted here in Oregon, but I am not really from here. This land is not naturally in my blood, but, to continue along with the metaphor, it is like I have had a blood transfusion. It is not as if I could have stayed back in the old lands with my original blood either.
Of course, such a story is not unique to me. Most of us have wandered away from the places where we were born and raised. We may have moved to Oregon from New York or Hawaii, or moved from one corner of the state to another. In the old country, my classmates in Neyveli have resettled in places far, far away from that industrial town and from their "native" villages.
We are all settlers, not unlike Europeans who moved to the Americas and Australia and New Zealand and southern Africa. Thankfully, we did not colonize the lands but we came in peace. But, the settlers that we are, we lack the fierce spirit of the place that a rare few have because they and their peoples have lived on that same land for generations.
The massive mining project and power generation projects in Neyveli required displacing people who had lived there for a long time. In the name of development and progress, the lands were acquired and people were compensated. Settlers from different parts of India came to work in the town. I grew up there, without knowing anything about the people who once lived on those lands.
This is also not a unique story. It has happened all over the world, and continues on even today.
It is no wonder then that the resistance to modern projects mostly comes from people who have lived for generations in the places where those projects will be located. Almost always, they are farmers and fishers and indigenous people, to whom their homes are more than mere homes. An emotional attachment about which most of the rest of us know nothing. How would we know what that means when we have been wandering, settling, and resettling?
In The Shepherd's Life that I am currently reading, the author, James Rebanks, describes his people and the way of life that, according to his estimate, has been going on for five thousand years in the landscape in the north of England, in the Lake District. He writes about the dignity of the people, and the indignities that they have had to face because they value their lands and sheep more than school and urban life. “Some of the smartest people I’ve ever known are semi-illiterate,” Rebanks writes.
When I was a kid, I had no doubts that being the smartest one in the class was the best thing ever. To see my name on the blackboard as one of the ranked students was validation beyond compare. Studying engineering, coming to America, earning a doctorate, were all "progress" along the continuum. But, like I said, I have understood a thing or two about the human condition. One of those is simply that such smartness is not a big deal, and is nothing more special than any other skill that others have.
But then, do I want to live a deeply rooted life in the idyllic landscape in the north of England, or in the south of India, where people are skilled very differently from me?
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